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virgil
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Post by virgil »

Cable service providers (hey, they count as pieces of entertainment infrastructure) have been pissing me off. I get junk mail for them more often than credit card offers, and have for years. I get door-to-door sales people coming in response to internet repair calls. They send people to the electronics department of Wal-Marts and have them use aggressive hard sell tactics, including interrupting peoples' conversations to make their pitch. I have taken to circumnavigating that entire section just to avoid getting too close.
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Post by Prak »

Sounds like the douchebags that hock gym memberships around here. Which... I have to assume is a depressing ass job. They all seem like they were third or fourth tier jocks in high school, who couldn't really get into college with a scholarship, so they had to get a customer service job, and apparently the one where they basically get paid to say "Hey, fatso, come give us money for nothing because I know you'll never fucking use the gym" sounded amazing. Fuck, I have to admit, given the personality they all seem to have, it probably did sound amazing. Hell, if you told me I could get paid to tell middle aged guys in track suits and wife beaters to go fuck themselves, I'd jump at the chance.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Prak »

Iron Fist is, like, impressively mediocre. Just about everyone in it would have been a better Iron Fist than the guy they actually cast as the Iron Fist, Finn Jones.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by fbmf »

Prak wrote:Iron Fist is, like, impressively mediocre. Just about everyone in it would have been a better Iron Fist than the guy they actually cast as the Iron Fist, Finn Jones.
Ward was seriously the most interesting character.

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Post by Prak »

Hm... I think I agree, but in a damning way. I don't give a shit about Ward, but all the other characters are that uninteresting. Colleen had potential to be interesting, but she isn't given enough plot, even towards the end where they drop the "twist*"

Ward may be a spoiled wealthy jerkass, but he has an actual story, and it's a vaguely interesting one.
*That she's part of the good Hand.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Maj »

I just watched Dr. Strange (finally). While it didn't lose me, it didn't rock me, either. It was cool-looking, but story-wise was a resounding meh. The cape had the most personality, I think.

I'm so worn out on superheroes. It just seems like a parade of rehashed stories, flat characters, and super special effects. All those lights... I want to turn it off before I have a seizure. The only movie I'm looking forward to is Wonder Woman, and I'm horribly afraid of how it could all go wrong. :(
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Post by MGuy »

Prak wrote:Iron Fist is, like, impressively mediocre. Just about everyone in it would have been a better Iron Fist than the guy they actually cast as the Iron Fist, Finn Jones.
You have a better opinion of it than a friend of mine. All he wanted out of the show was at best a cheesy story with good fight scenes. He says what he got was a boring show with (in his words) an almost aggressively dumb protagonist. He described the fights as forgettable with the main character's abilities fluctuating throughout. This is all capped off by an actor who doesn't even look right for the part in his opinion.

I don't know how good the show is personally, and I wouldn't be a good judge anyway because I dislike pretty much every comic book tv show (from Smallville and Gotham to Arrow and Flash), but I've seen mixed reviews online. Some more professional reviewers don't seem to like it but there are less than professional critics who do and I've heard tale of some loud faction of people who believe it's getting an unfair shake because of dem no good SJWs.
Last edited by MGuy on Sat Apr 01, 2017 11:02 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Prak »

It's just thoroughly bland and boring. Like, it's not even bad, let alone entertainingly bad. I agree with your friend on every point, I just rank it differently.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by fbmf »

MGuy wrote: I've heard tale of some loud faction of people who believe it's getting an unfair shake because of dem no good SJWs.
So what's the scoop,with that? I don't read Marvel Comics, so I genuinely didn't know the first thing about the character until the show came out. Did they whitewash an Asian character?

Game On,
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Post by Username17 »

fbmf wrote:
MGuy wrote: I've heard tale of some loud faction of people who believe it's getting an unfair shake because of dem no good SJWs.
So what's the scoop,with that? I don't read Marvel Comics, so I genuinely didn't know the first thing about the character until the show came out. Did they whitewash an Asian character?

Game On,
fbmf
They did not. Iron Fist was always originally a bizarre bit or Orientalism from the 70s. A white dude whose actual power was being super Asian. For a while Marvel teased that they were going to get rid of the weird "Nick Cage as Fu Manchu" vibe that the character had by just getting an Asian character to play him. And then they didn't do that and got a bland white dude who can't act. Not whitewashing, but they clearly had some ideas about how to make the character less shit and then they didn't go through with any of them. What they came up with for Iron Fist is too boring for me to get through an episode of, and pretty much everyone I've talked to agrees that it doesn't actually get better later on.

Of course, I actually find the pacing of the Marvel Netflix shows to be fucking awful. I still haven't finished Luke Cage. It's not that I don't like it, it's that the pacing is really bad and hard to justify setting aside blocks of time to watch more of it. And I just plain lost interest in Daredevil when they started whining about whether it was OK to kill Kingpin after the main character had started the show murderstabbing several mooks every single episode.

Green Arrow and Flash are only slightly less hokey than the old Adam West Batman, but they are at least paced properly for 45 minute shows.

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Post by Prak »

Yeah, basically, Marvel/Netflix said "Hey, we're gonna do Iron Fist! Because we want to do Defenders/Heroes for Hire." And people said "Wow, this would be a great opportunity to cast an asian or asian american actor, because going straight is just continuing White Savior orientalism bullshit." Marvel/Netflix talked about casting an asian actor, Lewis Tan, and people got excited, then they decided to actually cast mediocre guy from Game of Thrones (which, what? I missed that season, I think) Finn Jones. And people were reasonably irritated.

Critics got the first six episodes and said "Wow, this is slow, shittily paced bullshit with shite fight scenes. What the fuck?" And people who think that representation is reverse racism said "DMANED ESJAYDUBLEYOUS YOU TURNED THE CRITICS!"

And then the series actually came out, and we all saw, yeah, the first six episodes were shit, and the last seven were .... meh.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Longes »

Iron Fist was kind of in the damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, because there already was a second camp saying that making marvel's first asian lead a martial artist is racist.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Prak wrote:then they decided to actually cast mediocre guy from Game of Thrones (which, what? I missed that season, I think) Finn Jones. And people were reasonably irritated.
Loras Tyrell was in every season of GOT that has been broadcast (and won't be in any more due to wildfire).
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Post by Mechalich »

FrankTrollman wrote:Of course, I actually find the pacing of the Marvel Netflix shows to be fucking awful. I still haven't finished Luke Cage. It's not that I don't like it, it's that the pacing is really bad and hard to justify setting aside blocks of time to watch more of it. And I just plain lost interest in Daredevil when they started whining about whether it was OK to kill Kingpin after the main character had started the show murderstabbing several mooks every single episode.

Green Arrow and Flash are only slightly less hokey than the old Adam West Batman, but they are at least paced properly for 45 minute shows.

-Username17
Totally with you on the pacing issues for the Netflix Marvel shows - they're all too long, both in number of episodes and length of episodes. Making every episode of Luke Cage a full hour was positively criminal, the padding is so obvious.
Last edited by Mechalich on Sat Apr 01, 2017 10:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by hyzmarca »

fbmf wrote:
MGuy wrote: I've heard tale of some loud faction of people who believe it's getting an unfair shake because of dem no good SJWs.
So what's the scoop,with that? I don't read Marvel Comics, so I genuinely didn't know the first thing about the character until the show came out. Did they whitewash an Asian character?

Game On,
fbmf
Iron Fist, Danny Rand, is the son of two rich people named Wendell and Heather Rand, who decided to take their son on a trip to find a mystical city in the Himalayas, Kun-Lun. Kun-Lun only appears once every 7 years. The Wendell's best friend and business partner, Harold Meachum, also went with them.

Now, Dad's best friend has the hots for Mom, and so murders dad. Mom is understandably horrified. When Meachum realizes that he will not be able to tap that, he leaves Heather and Danny on the mountain to die of exposure. Mom is eaten by wolves. But Danny is able to live long enough to stumble into Kun-Lun. Danny grows up as an outsider, being the only white person in the entire cities, and trains in martial arts with the intent to take revenge on the man who murdered his parents, when he grows up. Eventually, he fights a dragon named Shou-Lao the Undying and beats him to death, then plunges his hands into the dragon's burning heart, which is how he becomes Iron Fist.

There are good reasons to keep Danny non-Asian. It allows him to be a conspicuous outsider in both his city of birth and his city of adoption. He's an outsider in Kun-Lun because of his race, he's an outsider and New York because he was raised in a magic city that only aligns with the earth once every seven years.

However, there are also good reasons to have an Asian-American actor play the role.

And, frankly, they made some odd decisions. Like making Harold Meachum an actual villain. In the comic, when Danny tracks down Harold, he finds a legless old man who is wracked with guilt over his crimes. And his decision not to kill Harold was a major part of his character development.

Likewise, making Kun-Lun a cosmopolitan magic city takes away some of Danny's outsider status and removes one of the biggest reasons to maintain his original race.
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Post by Prak »

Longes wrote:Iron Fist was kind of in the damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, because there already was a second camp saying that making marvel's first asian lead a martial artist is racist.
Admittedly, yes. But then you also have the pan-asian martial arts bad guys The Hand, so...

But, yeah, they were going to get criticism either way.
Omegonthesane wrote:
Prak wrote:then they decided to actually cast mediocre guy from Game of Thrones (which, what? I missed that season, I think) Finn Jones. And people were reasonably irritated.
Loras Tyrell was in every season of GOT that has been broadcast (and won't be in any more due to wildfire).
Oh, him! Ok, it's been a bit, and I tend to watch stuff while I'm doing other things. Completely forgot about that character.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Well if an Asian martial artist is racist then then we need to get rid of the Asian ninjas and Asian monks and Asian drunken masters that show up in Netflix marvel shows.

Netflix Elektra also has a Cambodian-French actress play Elektra, who's a Greek White woman in the Miller comics so fans have already accepting some race changing... at least with

The guy who plays Zhou in Iron Fist, Lewis Tan, tweeted about wanting to be the lead for Iron Fist if Marvel gave him a chance. Writer of Lost Steve Maeda also mentioned some weeks ago how he pitched an Asian American lead for Iron Fist but got turned down (he didn't say race was the issue, just saying Marvel did have that brought to attention).

Asian films made in Asia for an Asian audience include many many many martial arts films from fantasy with demon martial arts to modern day police thriller martial arts.

Hong Kong actor Daniel Wu is the lead for AMC's Into the Badlands and that's a fun show with lots of martial arts action.

Yeah I'd like to see more folks talk about Into the Badlands than just complain about Iron Fist and watch it anyways.

Image

Like holy cow this is every coolguy slayer hero of the 90's condensed into one man.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Asian martial artist characters aren't inherently racist, but if there's only one Asian person on your super-roster and their power is super-karate (or super-math), that is kind of racist. Not as racist as just going with a cultural appropriation character or not having any Asian representation at all, but still something you want to think twice about.

I think they could have threaded that needle by making Danny a latino or something, that way he's still an outsider from both ends without being either kind of stereotype. But of course the show doesn't actually do anything with Danny being an outsider, his position in both the Kun Lun and Earth contexts is ridiculous privilege.
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Post by MGuy »

It's funny that you mention Badlands because that's exactly the show my friend referred me to when I said that he shouldn't expect really good fight scenes in a little TV show.
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Post by Nebuchadnezzar »

Danny Rand can't help but be two-dimensional. There are five main facets to his character: have crazy kung-fu fights, get woke by his first black friend, fumble at leveraging his wealth in service to his newly acquired social awareness, have an off-and-on relationship with Misty Knight, and provide a pretext for introducing side characters that are more engaging than himself. The Netflix series skimped on the first with a bunch of quick cut bullshit, will presumably attempt the second and third during Defenders, and will likely forgo the fourth. Lip service to the fifth facet was paid with the Meachums, which were a weak choice poorly implemented. It's my opinion that the only reason they didn't go with the 70's origin, with Harold as legless and quickly murdered, was so that Joy's reunion with her dad reminds the viewer of how Trump wants to fuck his daughter.

What I would have preferred to see is an abbreviated version of the boardroom drama woven into an adaptation of the first and third arcs from 2006's The Immortal Iron Fist comic, with Danny Rand in a more ensemble role. Orson Randall is a much cooler character than Danny, and that storyline shows the Rand fortune stemming from gold stolen by the corrupt leadership of the Seven Cities of Heaven so as to create secret gates between Earth and the Cities. It provides a workaround for the whole "1 day/X years portal" shtick, allows Danny to learn by degrees that he's heir to a legacy of multiple forms of exploitation, and provides a flashback opportunity for a 1920's gun-fu blimp fight between the Confederates of the Curious and the Prince of Orphans.

Discussions about appropriation and stereotypes caused me to look through a couple of sites and try to compile a list of hopefully most of the South/East/Southeast Asian Marvel characters. Here's what I have, with a couple of insipid comments. My takeaway is that Marvel should recast some more previously white characters, since these are slim pickings. Please let me know of anyone I missed.

Shang-Chi(Shen Kuie, Fu Manchu, Leiko Wu)
(He's a martial artist with the fictional personification of the Yellow Peril for a dad. Even if the licensing gets straightened out this seems unlikely.)

Jimmy Woo(Yellow Claw, Jade Claw)
(Similar to Shang-Chi, but replace martial arts with 50's superspies. Downplay the Yellow Claw/Secret Khanate angle, and play up Agents of Atlas, and I'd watch.)

Amadeus Cho
(I imagine She-Hulk would be introduced before T.A Hulk. As much as I might like to see him palling around with Hercules, Cho's superpower in that series is "Good at math".)

Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel
(She had a cartoon appearance 8 months ago. If it weren't for her fluff requiring introducing Inhumans and Captain Marvel(who requires introducing the Kree) and difficulty in making her powers look good on screen, she'd be the clear choice. An animated series would be well-received.)

Faiza Hussain
(Hussain and Woo are my personal choices. A stripped-down M.I.: 13 where she's learning how to swordfight from a Black Knight increasingly suffering from his curse could be played a few ways.)

Monica Chang
(I'm surprised she's hasn't already been in Agents of SHIELD)

Collective Man, Radioactive Man
(Is Marvel even allowed to show Chinese anti-hero/villains?)

ALREADY OR SOON TO BE ADAPTED: Big Hero 6, Mandarin, Mantis, Nico Minoru, Jim Morita, Colleen Wing, Quake
(A Daughters of the Dragon series seems certain, potentially including every female Netflix character, budget permitting. This would be a good place to introduce Angela/Aya del Toro as White Tiger.)

DAREDEVIL/IRON FIST RELATED: Immortal Weapons: Bride of Nine Spiders, Dog Brother #1, Fat Cobra, Tiger's Beautiful daughter; Shadowland: Cherry Blossom, Makro, Yuki; Sons of the Tiger: Lin Sun, Shinchuko Lotus; Lady Bullseye. Master Izo
(The Bride was referenced in Iron Fist, and the other Weapons might get similar treatment if there's a second season. White Tiger is more likely to be used than the Sons of the Tiger)

MINOR CHARACTERS: Invaders: Golden Girl II, Radiance; New Warriors: Midnight's Fire, Silhouette; Black Lotus, Chance(Fallen Angels mini-series), Amy Chen, Dragon Lord, Suzi Endo, Hazmat, Jolt, Komodo, Push (MC2), Turbo
(Radiance would be a great character that both plays against stereotype and has a link to WWII via her (great)grandmother, Golden Girl II. Silhouette and Hazmat are noteworthy characters with disabilities that would improve with a bit of background scrubbing, and Turbo would be neat if someone were to put a spin on Loners. The rest are either martial artists or have little name recognition.)

X-MEN AND RELATED: Kobayashi Amiko, Armor, Daken, Dust, Indra, Jubilee, Karma, Kirika, Lady Deathstrike, Yashida Mariko, Matsuya Takashi, Meanstreak, Psylocke(kinda), Red Lotus, Neal Shaara, Karima Shapandar, Senyaka, Shinobi Shaw, Silver Samurai, Sunfire, Sunpyre, Surge, Sway, Opal Tanaka, Tyger Tiger, Xi'an, Xorn, Yukio
SPIDER MAN RELATED: Silk, Tara Virango/Enigma, Takuya Yamashiro (70's Spider-Man)
(Marvel presumably doesn't have the rights to any of these)

NATIONAL TEAMS: People's Defense Force/China Force: Auric, Collective Man, Dog, Jade Dragon, Lady of Ten Suns, Most Perfect Hero, Ninth Immortal, Ox, Princess of Clouds, Rabbit, Rat, Scientific Beast, Silver, Snake, Spirit Animal; Triumph Division: Red Feather, Mighty Mother, St. George, Anitun, Fighter One, The Wishing Man, The Great Mongoose: (Super team of the Phillipines, 4 issue Iron Man arc);
(Not a chance)
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Post by Mechalich »

Somewhat relevant to previous posts: I went and saw the live action Ghost in the Shell (because my girlfriend has strong feelings for the franchise). Notably, I did so after re-watching the original less than twenty-four hours before. The new film is...not compelling.

There are some cool visuals in the new movie, that's certainly true. There are also some stylistically slick live action re-creations of shots from the original. The latter, however, really hurt the movie, since the two films are actually very dissimilar and the whole thing feels like an attempt to reboot the characters and story while using essentially the same scenes. For example the spider-tank fight at the end is basically a shot-for-shot recreation of the original, but happens for completely different reasons and ultimately resolves with a vastly different outcome. It's just weird.

Weirdness abounds in general, including with the whole whitewashing controversy. Beyond the Major's character, the film includes a weird mix of White and Asian actors and has some characters - notably Aramaki - who speak entirely in Japanese while others speak only in English. Heck, pretty much everyone who works for Hanka Robotics is a European actor. The result is a weirdly futuristic world that isn't grounded in anything at all and is forced to rely on an incredibly bland 'evil corporation' plotline, without even bothering to provide any justification for why Hanka went down the obviously evil route at all.

As for Scarlet Johansson as the Major, it's hard to say much. She gives a reasonable performance, though they changed the focus of the character significantly - in the original the Major is all about where she's trying to go, whereas this Major is focused on where she came from, it's pretty much a total 180 - though they are at least consistent about where that takes things at the end. Frankly the most notable thing about the portrayal was how oddly uncomfortable Johansson seemed to be wearing the bodysuit contraption they created versus any scene in which she was just in clothing. Whatever the ultimate reason, it just did not look good and they should have done something else.

All in all, very unimpressive. I have no idea what the director and studio were attempting to do with this movie, it's just a mess and it deals with its central whitewashing controversy in what has to be the dumbest of all possible ways.
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Post by erik »

I just watched The Lobster. It was bizarre with dry surreal humor. I can totally see why critics on rotten tomatoes rated it around 90% and lay people around 65%. It was designed for critics to love.

Anywho, I was mildly enjoying myself, but...
the dog scene
That wasn't necessary, and pushed it from maybe recommend to certain persons, into I just plain don't recommend.
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Post by Blicero »

erik wrote:I just watched The Lobster. It was bizarre with dry surreal humor. I can totally see why critics on rotten tomatoes rated it around 90% and lay people around 65%. It was designed for critics to love.
I really liked The Lobster, but I also consider myself fairly susceptible to well-presented indie-wank.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

I found it really disturbing when Danny Rand was grooming Colleen Wing for an abusive relationship. Did no-one else catch that?
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Post by Prak »

Does anyone here listen to The Adventure Zone podcast? I wouldn't say it's bad exactly, but it's definitely for a very specific audience, which isn't me, or, frankly, probably not most people here.

The Adventure Zone is a recording of three brothers and their dad playing D&D. It's pretty popular on Tumblr, so I decided to give it a shot, since one of my jobs involves sitting in my car for twenty minutes at a time, four or more times per shift. But...

Well, to start, they're playing 5e. Which is fine. People can choose to play bad versions of D&D that fit their playstyle. I myself keep being tempted to play WW.

But... well, I guess the next thing is that the people playing are "filthy casuals", meaning that they aren't particularly interested in actually learning 5e's "you could write them on a post-it" simple rules, and they treat the whole thing as a joke. Wait. That doesn't really do it justice. I'm fine with "The goblin looks like Common and sounds like Kelsey Grammer, and talks about his group inhabiting the dungeon like it's an office gig." That's funny. But when the PC and NPC elf wizards are voiced as if the people are trying to do an Emo Philips impression, and the DM has decided that the wizard named Taako's great destiny is to invent tacos--which... *sigh* it's fucking meat in flatbread. I fucking guarantee that such things existed in the Iron Age and medieval eras that D&D pastiches. I know for a goddamned fact that ground beef was not the mysterious alien thing to medieval cultures that the DM seems to think it was. I mean... fucking sausage.

Someone on Tumblr said that they don't really think of it as a D&D podcast. Maybe that's fair, but I'm listening for D&D.

Any suggestions?
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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